ABSTRACT
Although the Communist party-state, led by Mao Zedong, had persecuted China's intellectuals from the mid-1950s until Mao's death in 1976, the intellectuals welcomed the post-Mao party-state, inaugurated in 1978 and led by Mao's Long March colleague Deng Xiaoping. Despite their repression under Mao, like their literati predecessors, they saw themselves as members of the governing elite and as advisors to the political leadership. For the most part, the post-Mao governments of Deng Xiaoping (1978-92) and Jiang Zemin shared their Confucian view of the importance of intellectuals to good governance. Deng and his supposed successor, the reformist general-secretary Hu Yaobang rehabilitated virtually all the intellectuals purged by Mao from the prisons, labor reform camps and "stinking 9th hell" in which Mao had put them. They appointed them to positions in government as well as in academia and the media and accorded them the prestige and high offices once accorded the literati. Most intellectuals reciprocated by helping the post-Mao party-state repudiate the ideology and policies of the Mao era and move toward a more open society and market economy. They enthusiastically joined the official establishment and supported the Deng Xiaoping and the succeeding Jiang Zemin governments.
